


Inferno

by jadepresley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Despite being set in a Muggle University this is NOT an AU, Drug Use, Excessive Drinking, F/M, Falling In Love, Vague References to Suicide, secret pairing - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 12:18:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14544588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadepresley/pseuds/jadepresley
Summary: If he was ice then she was the fire, and though he loved her he was quite certain they were destined to destroy one another in the end.





	Inferno

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: [Partners in Crime by Set It Off](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1ZcnNNsMdg)  
> This piece was part of the Sing Me A Rare B:Side OS Competition Spring/Summer 2018. I had a choice of song and I could chose my own pairing. All characters, spells, magical equipment and locations from the Harry Potter series belong to JK Rowling.
> 
> Edit: So, so honoured to have won "Overall Winner", "Judge's Winner", "Best Written", "Most Outrageous Pairing", "One You Wish Could Be Canon", and "Best Angst", along with Runner Up for "Best Surprise Ending" in the above competition! Thank you so much to everyone who read voted and commented!! <3

****He’d enjoyed fire ever since he was old enough to know what it was. Something about the way it danced so elegantly as it destroyed the things in its path drew him in; the way even the smallest embers could cause such complete catastrophe. A single flickering flame, alluring with its soft glow and comforting warmth, was lovely until it danced too close and that same warmth seared and scarred.

Fire was beautiful and dangerous and unforgiving. It consumed with an insatiable hunger with no regard for the ashes it left behind.

He admired it, but he wasn’t like that. No, he’d always been closer to ice; cold; harsh; biting.  

And perhaps, in hindsight, that’s what had caught her eye in the first place.

Because if he was ice then she was the fire, and though he loved her he was quite certain they were destined to destroy one another in the end.

**ooOoo**

He’d never been one to blame others for his own shortcomings or mistakes, but he felt entirely confident placing responsibility on his parents’ shoulders for the person he was.

He hadn’t actually spoken to them in years, despite spending every summer in the same house as them. It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part; he’d spent most of his early teen years begging them to speak to him, to just _acknowledge_ he existed, but he’d learned it was useless and quickly closed his heart to anybody else.

His grandparents were the ones who’d taken pity on him back when it first became clear he wasn’t the person he was supposed to be. They were the ones to pack him up and send him off to the most expensive boarding school they could find in England, because even though he was an embarrassment, sending him to anything but the very best school was unfathomable. His parents had likely only agreed because they thought it would punish him for being the mistake he was, but he didn’t care; it meant he was free of the loneliness he’d constantly felt being trapped in the walls of their manor, free of the contemptuous looks from his father and the disgust from his mother whenever he had the misfortune of crossing their paths. They’d loved him once, in a life that seemed very far away from who he’d become, but that love came with conditions and footnotes, and unfortunately, the lack of a letter arriving at their door was all it took to shatter the illusions he had of their happy family.

The life he fell into for his six years of high school was foreign and strange at first, but he learned quickly there were only a few differences between these people and the ones he’d left behind. Money, it seemed, bred the same kinds of personalities no matter what world they were from, and thanks to his parents he was more than familiar with the games of the elite.

And it _was_ a game, all of it. A sick, twisted game of half truths and money played by beautiful people lapping up phoney prestige, and he watched it played over and over. He knew how things worked; he knew the right things to say and the right people to say them to, and he was handsome enough that when he spoke people listened, but he preferred to hover around the edges, to watch and listen and gather information about the others.

He’d really not thought much about what would happen when he graduated high school until his grandparents showed up one day and moved him to a university that reeked of the same old money and elitist bullshit he’d just come from. He was an adult now; he didn’t have to go, but what else would he do?

He was good at the game now, at least. Trained in how to handle the thinly veiled insults and attempts at asserting superiority. It was tiring and petty, and though he was as lonely as ever, at least he’d forged a place for himself in this world, was more established here than he’d ever been in his parents’ world, and he’d make the most of it even if he did loathe the circumstances that led him here.

 _At least I have a few more years to figure out what I want from life_ , he thought to himself as he unlocked the door to his new lodgings.

His roommate was already there smoking a joint, and there was a blonde woman on her knees in front of him. Neither one of them made a move to stop what they were doing.

“Hey,” his roomate greeted shamelessly, taking a lazy drag of the joint. His gaze was assessing, judgemental, and then he seemingly made his decision and said, “I’m Lars.”

He stared at Lars for a moment. If he could bring himself to care, he might have been embarrassed that his roommate was fucking a girl’s throat in front of him, but he just shrugged and introduced himself before turning away to find his room.

“There’s a welcome party in the Prescott Lodge tonight,” Lars called after him. “It’s invite only, but you can come as my guest.”

He closed the bedroom door behind him and looked around his needlessly large room, at the pathetic attempts at excessive luxury that bordered on tacky. His mother would die if she saw how gaudy the curtains were. He sighed to himself and wondered what his life would have been like had he only been born the son she wanted.

**ooOoo**

The welcome party was the kind of thing he’d seen countless times throughout high school; too much booze and the smell of marijuana mixed with snobby girls, and boys who wanted everyone to know who their fathers were.

Lars introduced him to a few people before disappearing into a room with a red headed woman he suspected might be a professor.

He wasn’t in the mood to drink or smoke or play games, and he might have left after finishing the drink that had been shoved in his hand — if he’d not seen _her._

He wasn’t fool enough to believe in fanciful romantic things like love at first sight, but intrigue at first sight was certainly real. She was sat on a windowsill with a lighter in her hand, clicking it on and off as she held a piece of paper above it. He watched as the edges of the paper slowly curled upwards in protest, only to disintegrate into ash, falling to the floor as the flames climbed closer to her fingers. She looked thoughtful as she watched it burn, and she didn’t drop the paper until the flames were already licking her skin.

He set his near empty cup down and walked over to her.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

She didn’t look up right away, stared instead at the small red burn marks on her fingertips. “Some say the world will end in fire,” she quoted softly turning her hand over. “Some say in ice.”

“It’s incredibly pretentious to quote Robert Frost to someone the first time you speak to them,” he told her irritably. Because it was, even if he’d done it himself in the past.

Her head snapped up then, and she grinned at him. It annoyed him how lovely her face was.

“Haven’t you heard?” she whispered conspiratorially. “Pretension is the key to happiness around here. That, and a trust fund.”

“Ah, well if only someone had told me sooner. No wonder I’m so unhappy,” he retorted snidely. He wasn’t sure if they were arguing or just talking.

She leaned back against the window and closed her eyes. “We’re all unhappy,” she said, smiling still. “We have to be; there’s so much more beauty in pain, don’t you think? No one wants to read poetry about what a lovely fucking day it is.”

“Are you high?” he asked sincerely, because he really had no idea what to make of her, “or just crazy?”

She opened her eyes and slid off the window sill, smoothing down her pleated school skirt before linking her arm through his. “Maybe both,” she replied as she tugged him across the room. “Maybe neither. Come on.” She led him into a kitchen that looked as though it belonged in a restaurant. “We need to drink. We’re celebrating.”

She let him go and retrieved two bottles of whiskey from a cupboard. She handed him one and then stared expectantly.

“Fine,” he conceded, unscrewing the lid. “What are we celebrating?”

“Us, obviously.” She lifted herself onto the benchtop and beckoned him forward. He stepped forwards, almost touching her knees. She reached for his tie and tugged him closer so that her legs bracketed his hips. She smelled like alcohol and some sort of sweet perfume.

“We’re celebrating the terrible choices we’re going to make,” she murmured, pressing her free hand flat to his chest. She curled her fingers slightly into his shirt. “We’re celebrating the terrible lives we’re going to live. We’ll drink to all of it. Or to none of it, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just celebrate this single moment of peace we have together before we go our separate ways and fuck everything up completely.”

He let out a short, shallow laugh. “That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard,” he said. “I don’t feel peaceful at all.”

She threw her head back and laughed, wrapping her legs around him completely to hold him in place. “That’s why we drink,” she said. She lifted her bottle and winked. “To us.”

He clinked his bottle against hers and took a swig. “Fuck,” he coughed, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. “You’ll die if you drink a whole bottle of this, you know that right?”

“Maybe,” she agreed, drinking again.

Up this close, he could see the sharp, bright blue colour of her eyes. She had a dimple on her right cheek, and a soft indent in her bottom lip from where she kept biting down on it.

He lifted her hand from his chest and brought it up close to his face.

“You burnt yourself,” he murmured. He pressed his lips to the tips of her fingers. “Stupid of you.”

She only smiled and gently disentangled their bodies. She slid off the bench, pressed a kiss to his cheek, and then she was gone.

**ooOoo**

A full week passed before he saw her again. Another faceless student was having another needless party — the fourth he’d been to since he arrived. He could have just stayed in his room and refused to participate, but he let himself be dragged along by Lars, laughed when he was supposed to and accepted their booze.

Maybe he was hoping to see her again, though he’d never admit it to himself.

The night passed by in a blur of burning liquor and shouting over music and sweaty bodies dancing too close. It wasn’t until time finally began to slow to a normal pace, when people’s eyes were heavy and their speech was slurred, that he saw her.

He was dancing with a girl whose name he couldn’t remember -—drunkenly swaying really, as she sucked on his neck and rubbed him through his trousers — and was considering fucking her, but then he looked over her shoulder.

She was already watching him with a small smirk playing on her lips. He pushed the other girl off him, barely hearing her surprised protests, and crossed the room without a backwards glance.

“Let’s go,” she said when he reached her, turning for the door without waiting for his reply.

He scowled and fell into step beside her as they descended the stairs. “You’re very presumptuous,” he complained. “What if I didn’t want to leave?”

“Isn’t the point of being an adult that we don’t get to do the things we want?” she asked. “Come on, we’re going to be late.” She grabbed his hand when they got outside and began to run. The grounds were deserted, and the only sound was their shoes on the cement and their breaths as they darted towards some unknown destination.

Her hand felt small in his. He didn’t like how fragile it made her seem.

She led him to the forest that bordered one side of the school. The cement turned to browning leaves and dirt, and the wind whipped through their hair more fiercely as they delved deeper into the trees.

When brambles caught her blouse and tore it, scratching her arm at the same time and leaving droplets of blood smattered on her skin, she only laughed and pushed back the dark curls that had fallen in her face.

“Here, look,” she said, pulling him to a sudden stop.

A huge tree was ahead of them, it’s trunk as wide as two cars and its canopy of leaves and branches so thick he couldn’t see the top.

On her instruction, he cupped his hands and let her stand on them, boosting her to one of the lower branches. She pulled herself into a sitting position easily and gestured for him to follow.

He was much taller than she was, and after finding a strong enough foothold, was able to pull himself up beside her. She was gone a moment later, scaling the branches like a ladder, moving quickly and easily through the leaves.

When he caught up to her, he looked out and could see the school grounds, could see the river and the first hints of sunlight appearing on the horizon.

“Do you think if I jumped from up here I’d fly?” she asked, her eyes a little unfocused as she stared up at the sky. “Do you think there’s enough magic in the world to make that happen?”

“You’d die,” he said flatly. “There’s no magic here.”

She hummed a small noise of agreement. “I know you hate them all as much as I do,” she murmured softly, her head leaned on his shoulder and her eyes fixed on the school now. “I see it in your eyes.”

He considered telling her to move, but he stayed quiet instead.

“We could burn it to the ground, you and I,” she said as the sun broke over the horizon and vivid shades of orange and red began to creep through the darkness. “All of it. All of them. We could sit up here and watch this terrible world burn.”

She was fascinating, he thought. Dangerous, maybe, but he decided he liked that about her.

“The joke would be on you,” he told her. “Who would we write sad poetry about if they were gone and we were happy?”

Her laugh was soft and tinkering. “I’d still be here,” she sighed. “and that would be the saddest joke of all.”

**ooOoo**

He considered that perhaps he was being reckless by skipping so many classes in favour of spending time with her. He’d plan to go, but she’d appear at his door at ten in the morning with wine and cigarettes, and he found himself unable to say no.

Sometimes she told him she would be there but then didn’t show up at all, and he had no idea where she went. He never asked, it wasn’t his business, and he was certain she wouldn’t tell him anyway.

He hadn’t seen her for three days when Lars dragged him to another party at the Prescott Lodge.

She was there, draped over a green sofa with the top two buttons of her blouse open. Her eyes were closed though she was murmuring something unintelligible.

Two boys he didn’t recognise were crouched beside her, patting her arm and stroking her hair, with predatory smirks on their faces.

He punched them both before he could think better of it.

He’d never hit anyone before, though his father had hit him enough for him to know the theory behind it. It felt good to hurt somebody, to watch their skin split and bleed, to watch them stumble with wide, frightened eyes as he loomed over them. He liked the way it made him feel. He liked that he’d done it for her.

She reeked of booze and her lipstick was smeared on one corner of her mouth. He carried her back to his room and put her to bed. Nobody stopped to ask what he was doing. He could have been anyone, been doing anything, but they were all so caught up in their own insanity they barely spared him a glance as he carried her off, half conscious.

He watched her sleeping for a minute, the light of the moon bathing the room in a glow that felt too soft, too intimate. He kissed her forehead and turned to leave but she grabbed his wrist.

“Did you hit them for me or because you wanted an excuse to hurt someone?” she murmured tiredly. “No, wait. Don’t tell me — I already know.”

He wondered if she did.

He glanced down at his bruised knuckles.

He wondered if he even knew.

**ooOoo**

“I want to show you something,” she whispered in his ear one afternoon.

Her fingers had snaked their way under his shirt, her nails scratching lightly over his lower back. He had class in twenty minutes, and he knew he was going to fail this year if he didn’t start going more. Her lips grazed his ear lobe and he shuddered.

“Okay,” he agreed.

It was a horrible day, rainy and dark, but he ran with her across the campus. They were both soaking wet in minutes. They ended up in the teachers’ parking lot, and she turned to him with a mischievous glint in her eyes, her dark hair plastered to her forehead.

“Come on, then,” she said, fishing a set of keys from her pocket and striding over to a blue Chevrolet.

“Whose is that?” he asked, hesitating at the passenger door.

“Does it matter?” she replied, climbing into the drivers side. She started the engine and lowered the convertible roof, letting the rain beat down on the interior of the car. “Are you coming?”

He grinned and climbed in.

She didn’t have a driver's license, and she was all over the road; reckless and erratic. Other cars honked at them, but she only screamed with laughter and drove faster. He should have been more worried but he didn’t care because she was happy.

When she veered onto the wrong side of the road and had to try and get out of the way of an oncoming lorry, the wheels screeched and the car spun out of control. The tail end smashed into a pole and his head collided with the dashboard.

His ears were ringing and he could taste blood on his lip, and before he could ask if she was okay she was sliding across the front seat and pressing their mouths together.

“That was fucking incredible,” she breathed against his lips.

They left the car and walked back to the school. He felt a pang of guilt for what they’d done, but she laughed it off when he brought it up and kissed him again, and he forgot what it was he’d been trying to say.

**ooOoo**

“Do you think magic is real?” she whispered into the dark. They were lying on the grass behind his dorm building. It was too cold and the grass was dewey but neither one of them wanted to move yet.

“Yes,” he replied, because what did he care anymore? What could they do to him now?

She turned her head to look at him. “Sometimes I think I see it in you,” she said. “A spark of something I can’t explain. I think that’s what it might be.”

“There’s no magic in me,” he said flatly, hands clenching the grass as her words hit a chord inside him he didn’t know was still there.

“I think there is,” she replied lightly, looking back to the sky. “Will you show it to me someday?”

He sat up abruptly and glared down at her.

“Why do you crave magic so badly?” he demanded, not really expecting any sort of real answer. “I have none to show you!”

She never got upset when he lost his temper. She never showed any real feelings.

“If magic were real maybe I could use it to disappear and never come back,” she said softly, smiling at him as though she wasn’t breaking his heart.

“Where would you go?” he asked, ignoring the ache in his chest.

She didn’t reply, only took his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm.

“We’ll find some magic,” she murmured. “One day.”

**ooOoo**

There was a sadness in her that he couldn’t cure. He could feel it when he was close to her, and perhaps he wasn’t supposed to see it, but sometimes when she looked at him, her blue eyes were wide and vulnerable, he saw the things inside her that she wouldn’t acknowledge.

He loved her in some sort of unnerving, complicated way. He loved all the strange, dark corners of her heart and the terrible, unforgivable parts of her mind.

She loved him too, he was sure of it, in her own unexplainable way.

It was a dangerous thing to care so much, but he did it anyway, because if he was going to burn, he wanted it to be her that ignited him.

He wondered if he would love her the same if they weren’t both this way.

It was such a selfish love; all consuming with no regard for anyone else. He didn’t care about the rest of them, would gladly watch them perish if it was what she wanted.

She found him one night in the midst of one of the many parties and she cupped his cheek. The noise around them faded away as she whispered in his ear.

“To find love in such a terrible world is a true miracle.”

Her fingers lingered for a moment, and then she was gone, disappearing into the dancing bodies, throwing herself among them as though they weren’t even there. His skin tingled from where her warmth had touched him.

It was the closest she’d ever came to telling him how she felt.

**ooOoo**

Every night they drank too much wine and danced until their legs couldn’t hold them. They played sad records too loudly and collapsed onto sofas, legs tangling and chests heaving.

“Look at them,” she murmured as she lay her head on his shoulder, staring at the people still dancing. A thick cloud of cigarette smoke hovered low in the room but nobody seemed to care. “They think this is happiness.”

“There’s no such thing,” he replied, though when her hand fell to his thigh he wondered if he meant it.

“Do you think anyone gets to be who they want to be?” she asked, stroking her fingers lightly along the seam of his pressed trousers.

“No,” he snorted. “I’ll never be who I was supposed to be.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then —

“I’m to be married in the summer,” she murmured. “My parents wrote to me. I think I’d rather kill myself than go through with it.”

He stared down at the top of her head, his chest tight.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” he said.

“Get married or kill myself?”

He wrapped an arm around her back and pulled her against his chest.

“You could run,” he suggested.

“Could I?” she mused, leaning back to look at him with the same bright glint in her eye she’d had before they stole the car. “Where in this world would we go that they couldn’t find us?”

“Us?” he repeated, scoffing. “You’re very presumptuous. What if I don’t want to go?”

She only smiled and settled back against his shoulder, and they both knew it was decided.

**ooOoo**

“Would you marry me if I proposed?” she asked. She was on his bed, legs propped up against the headboard and head tilted to the side to watch him pack.

He didn’t look up as he folded a pair of trousers and put them in his suitcase.

“I can promise all my heart's devotion,” he quoted.

“And a smile to chase away my tears of sorrow?” she asked with a smirk.

“If that’s what you want,” he replied, closing his cupboard and turning to her. “For someone who claims to hate Mark Twain you’re remarkably adept to quoting him.”

“You enjoy him,” she replied. “So I decided he mustn’t be so bad.”

“Are you proposing?” he wanted to know, leaning over her and letting his hair tickle her face as his nose bumped hers. “Or just musing to drive me crazy?”

“Neither,” she said, fingers bunching into the collar of his shirt. “Or maybe both. I haven’t decided.”

“You infuriate me,” he whispered against her lips.

“I think perhaps you could make me happy,” she whispered in reply. “And I find that quite terrifying.”

He kissed her for a long, slow minute.

“Would you really say yes if a woman were to ask for your hand?” she asked when they broke apart.

“No. I would say yes if _you_ were to ask. Nobody else. To hell with tradition.”

“Perhaps you could take my name too,” she laughed. “Or perhaps we could take each others and just confuse the world.”

He smiled down at her and pressed a kiss to her nose. “Your name would look much better on me anyway,” he said.

“Then it’s decided,” she declared, cupping his face and smiling broadly. “When we wed, you, my love, will be Argus Filch, and I’ll be Eleanor Norris.”

**ooOoo**

“Where are we going?” she asked again, and Argus glanced back at her to roll his eyes.

“Now you understand how I feel when you drag me on your adventures and won’t tell me anything.”

He pulled her by the hand through the late afternoon shoppers, his suitcase bulky and annoying in the other. He hated the chaos of London, and was relieved when he spotted the old pub. He hadn’t been through here since he was ten and with his parents, and a tiny piece of him had feared he wouldn’t be able to see it anymore. It was a cruel joke, really, that people like him could still see magic but were cursed to admire it from afar, never truly touching it.

“In here,” he said. If he’d not led her through the door she’d never have seen it. He didn’t give her a chance to ask questions as he moved quickly to the bar. Tom had been a good friend to him when they were kids. He hadn’t wanted to cut ties after Argus turned eleven and his parents instructed him to stay away, and he still wrote on occasion, even now. He’d not batted an eye when Argus contacted him for this.

Tom led them out the back door and tapped his wand on the bricks before leaving them alone again.

Eleanor's hand squeezed his when the bricks began to move. He didn’t care for the magic he’d not seen in nearly ten years; he only watched her face, watched the confusion and wonderment as the passage opened and she was shown another world.

“It’s magic,” she breathed out, turning to him with wide eyes.

“I don’t have any of my own,” he told her. “But I wanted you to see it anyway.”

They stepped into Diagon Alley and her head turned back and forth as she tried to see everything. She gasped and squealed and tugged him from shop to shop. They didn’t belong there, either of them, but he didn’t care because he’d never seen her smile that way and perhaps his love for her was less complicated than he thought. Perhaps it really was as simple as wanting to make her happy.

**ooOoo**

In hindsight, he should have known that good things couldn’t survive in a world so full of hatred and secrets. Or perhaps some buried part of him had known it all along but refused to acknowledge it.

He didn’t recognise them at first. After so long, why would he? It was only when they both saw him and froze that he realised it was his parents.

Eleanor had her arm linked through his and was murmuring about something in a shop window and hadn’t noticed the shift in his mood.

It was his father who moved first, a furious expression on his face.

“You,” he hissed, grabbing Argus’ arm. Argus tried to shake him off, and Eleanor gasped and tried to pull him away, but his father held on and dragged them both to a small alley beside the shop. His mother hovered back, not one to directly participate in conflict but never missing an opportunity to watch it unfold.

“How did you get in here?” his father demanded. He’d aged since Argus had last seen him, and had streaks of grey through his hair and moustache now.

“I’m surprised you recognised me, father,” he retorted snidely. He wondered if he looked like his father had at this age. He hoped not.

“How dare you speak to me that way,” his father hissed. “After everything I did for you, you dare —”

“Everything you did for me?” Argus laughed a loud and demented laugh. He reached for Eleanor’s hand.

He’d wondered sometimes, what seeing them again would be like, how it would feel to look at them, talk to them. He’d been sure it wouldn’t hurt, that those feelings were long gone, but his heart ached as his father glared at him and his mother kept her distance, and he felt eleven years old again, felt the sting of realising there was no letter and his parents refusing to hug him as he wept.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me, boy!” His father grabbed his arm again, digging his fingers in harshly. “You’ve no right to be here, flaunting your abnormalities with some good for nothing woman on your arm!”

“She’s a muggle,” Argus snapped, wanting something to shake the fury on his father’s face. Wanting to hurt him. “And I intend to marry her someday.”

His father backed Argus against the alley wall with a feral snarl before Argus could blink.

“Get off him, you monster,” Eleanor yelled, pushing at his fathers chest. “Don’t you dare touch him. You’ve no idea the man he is!”

Argus heart swelled with affection for her, but his blood turned to ice a moment later when his father raised his hand and the sound of him slapping Eleanor echoed through the alley.

“Filthy fucking muggle,” he spat.

She barely made a sound, just the tiniest surprised gasp as her hand clutched at her cheek, and Argus snapped. His fists flew in a flurry of punches, years of anger and resentment pouring out of him as his father stumbled back and tried to shield himself. There was blood on Argus’ knuckles, blood everywhere, and he couldn’t stop, not until Eleanor’s voice in his ear whispered, “enough.”

He fell back panting, as his father clutched at his face on the ground. His mother still hadn’t moved, a hand covering her mouth as she stared at the scene. Eleanor wrapped her fingers around his arm.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she murmured. Argus pulled himself up and pulled her into a hug. She made a surprised noise but wrapped her arms around his waist.

“I’d burn the world to the ground if you asked me to,” he said into her hair.

She pulled back to look at him and stroked a finger down her cheek over the red mark from his father’s hand. A dot of his blood stained her skin.

“I might love you,” she whispered, and she kissed him.

He heard his father’s furious shout too late, and he tried to yank her behind him, but the spell was too fast and hit her in the back. She slipped from his grasp. His father was gone a moment later, disapparating like a coward.

Argus fell to his knees. Eleanor was gone, and in her place sat a cat.

**ooOoo**

“Please, Mr Dumbledore” he begged, all illusions of dignity forgotten as he fell to his knees in front of the man. “My grandparents said you were the greatest wizard there is. Please, you have to help her.”

Dumbledore placed a hand on his arm and helped him to his feet. He had kind eyes and a face that was etched with far too many lines for a man of his age.

“The magic your father used was dark and unbalanced,” he said gently. “He likely didn’t even know what he was casting if it was done in anger, but when he changed her, he changed her mind. Her memories, the person she was, it was all erased. A spell to change her back would cause more damage, and she wouldn't have the mind she had before. She wouldn’t know you, Argus. Wouldn’t know herself.”

Argus let out a choked sobbed, watching as she wandered the room, sniffing things curiously. It had been his last option, coming here. He’d searched for an answer, for a way to change her back, and now the last shreds of hope he had clung to were severed.

She was gone.

“It’s my fault,” he said, and it was, perhaps, the only truth he would ever know again.

“I’m sorry I cannot do more,” Dumbledore said, and despite the ache threatening to destroy him, despite the mistrust he felt towards everybody but her, Argus heard the sincerity in the man’s voice.

“I need to leave,” Argus said abruptly. This room was too small, too constricting, and the choices he’d made were pressing in on him from every side. He would suffocate if he didn’t escape the weight of it.

“Do you have anywhere to go, Argus?” Dumbledore asked kindly. “You said you couldn’t go back to school.”

“My grandparents won’t pay for it anymore, so no. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”

Argus reached for Eleanor and lifted her into his arms. She nuzzled his chest, and his heart broke all over again.

"Perhaps,” Dumbledore said, “there is a way I can help.”

**oo0oo**

Maybe he was slipping into madness. Or maybe this was his hell, and he was destined to burn alone for an eternity. It didn’t matter, either way. Nothing did.

He went looking for his parents before he moved into the castle. He wasn’t sure of his plan once he saw them. Perhaps he’d kill them. Perhaps they’d kill him. He wasn’t sure which he hoped for more.

He didn’t get to find out though; their manor was deserted. He wandered the halls with Eleanor at his heels, the memories of his childhood a distant blur in the back of his mind. This house wasn’t his home, and he felt nothing when he set it alight.

He sat on the lawn, his back against a tree with Eleanor at his side, and he watched it burn. The flames climbed higher and the smoke was thick and dark. He wished his parents were inside.

Something in his heart shifted as glass shattered and walls began to crumble. Something cold and hard and immovable took its place. A bitterness settled on his tongue, stronger than it had ever been before. This world was broken and terrible. It deserved to burn, just as she’d always said it did.

Eleanor was watching the fire, purring softly.

Her mind was gone, and his was slowly slipping away too. He’d thought once that they were destined to destroy one another, in some pretentious, poetic sort of way. He should have known, broken as he was, that it was always going to be his fault in the end.

**Author's Note:**

> Poems quoted:  
> [Fire & Ice by Robert Frost](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44263/fire-and-ice)  
> [These I Can Promise by Mark Twain](https://theonlookers.wordpress.com/2013/10/30/these-i-can-promise-mark-twain/)


End file.
